Dependencies
Under installation this page says: "After installing the php-pecl-solr extension, users will have to download Apache Solr and keep it in an external directory". What does this mean? Must the Apache Solr server be installed on the schools' Moodle server, or is this something that each Moodle user (student/teacher) must install on their own workstations?
What about Moodle sites that run on IIS instead of Apache? Will this Global Search function only work on Apache web servers? Is the IIS web server excluded?
Is this the Apache Solr that this article is referring to?
--Luis de Vasconcelos 16:23, 7 June 2013 (WST)
My apologies for this ambiguity. I've changed that line to: "After installing the php-pecl-solr extension, users will have to download Apache Solr, unzip it and keep it in an external directory of Moodle". This means that the downloaded directory should be kept outside the Moodle's directory.
For this version of Global Search, we are using the php-pecl-solr extension. The Apache Solr server is just a Java Jetty server that needs to be run. It comes in the directory which you will download from Apache Solr. The administrator will install it while installing Moodle. (Separate student/teacher will not install it). It is just a standalone server that will keep running on your college server.
Yes, for this version of Global Search, we are aiming to make it run only with Apache web servers. In the future, hopefully when this first version gets done we will definitely try to make it flexible to other type of servers.
--Prateek Sachan 02:21, 17 June 2013 (WST)
Thanks for the clarification Prateek. I am a bit disappointed that this will only work on Apache hosted sites and that everybody else, including IIS, is excluded...
In MDL-31989 Tomasz Muras started work on a Global Search function. Have you seen that code? Would it not be better to finish what he has started instead of starting all over again from the beginning?
--Luis de Vasconcelos 17:33, 17 June 2013 (WST)
Yes, Tomasz started work on Global Search via Lucene but it was a dead end. He is my mentor for this project and has been helping me. Actually, Martin Dougiamas insisted to have it in PHP only. Now, there are no PHP search libraries but only Java search search libraries. Hence, we have chosen Apache Solr that has a php extension for enabling it to interact with it.
So, as long as you have java hosting (for running the java jetty server) and can install the pecl php extension on server, you would enjoy GS. Earlier, I wasn't sure of IIS servers. But looking through its readme file, the module could be compiled w/o any dependencies on the used webserver.
We would be providing the installation instructions and full procedure. However, for this version of Global Search we would be sticking only to the php-pecl-solr extension for interacting with Solr.
--Prateek Sachan 20:04, 18 June 2013 (WST)
